


golden is the morning

by haloud



Category: Roswell New Mexico (TV 2019)
Genre: Character Study, Domestic, Established Relationship, F/M, M/M, Relationship Study
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-24
Updated: 2020-12-24
Packaged: 2021-03-11 05:33:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,548
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28299759
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/haloud/pseuds/haloud
Summary: Maria and Michael come to a compromise; she wears the bracelet during the day and takes it off at night. And at night, she dreams...
Relationships: Maria DeLuca & Alex Manes, Maria DeLuca/Michael Guerin, Maria DeLuca/Michael Guerin/Alex Manes
Comments: 20
Kudos: 28





	golden is the morning

**Author's Note:**

  * For [MayGlenn](https://archiveofourown.org/users/MayGlenn/gifts).



> Merry Christmas, Maeg <3

Where Maria dreams, the sky is red. Her body is held by a different gravity. She stands on the top stair of a spiral winding down into a city underground, a cold weight, a sharp edge, a weapon at her side. When she wakes up, disoriented, she remembers only the conviction beating beneath her breast.

When she wakes up, she has one jacket bundled beneath her head as a pillow and another draped over her as a blanket, absolutely soaked with the smell of rain and subtle cologne.

Michael looks over at her from his worktable, brow furrowed, eyes puppy dog-huge in the low underground light, but he doesn’t say anything, lets her talk first. It’s a compromise between the two of them, that she’ll wear the bracelet while she’s awake but leave it off for sleeping, dream like the old seers dreamed, live like other people lived. He tries not to smother her when she wakes up.

Alex, though, has no such reservations.

“You okay?” he asks, tossing her a half-empty bottle of Tylenol before she even has a chance to answer.

“Bit of a headache,” she replies, shaking the bottle at him sarcastically. “And here I thought I was the mind reader.”

Michael floats her over a cup of water to take the pills with, and once she’s done, she stands, stretches, and walks over to kiss him, cupping his face in both her hands, resting their foreheads together even after they part. He absolutely _hums_ with devotion like this. Maria wonders, sometimes, if Alex can feel it too, pure human as he is. She hopes he can. He deserves to feel this too.

She takes the bracelet out of her pocket and puts it on. “What are you working on?”

“Just tinkering. So our tech has organic elements, right? If I can find some sort of fuel—some sort of fertilizer…”

“You want to _grow_ a spaceship?”

“Not necessarily a spaceship!” He glances up at Alex, who always gets tense when talk of Michael leaving the planet comes up. Michael holds open an arm to welcome him into a hug, sharing his warmth around. “It would be nice to be able to make more of the basic component. That’s what I’m focused on for now. If we had to repair a pod, for example.”

“Oh, that’s smart.”

Michael hums in response, then bends over to pick up his tools again, one handed. But Maria stops him, grabs his wrist, pulls it around her waist so he’s got one of them on each arm.

“That’s more like it,” she says, kissing him on the cheek.

“Agreed,” Alex adds, dropping his kiss on the top of Michael’s head. “I’m going to order dinner. That’s enough work for today.”

* * *

Where Maria dreams, she stands at the bank of a pond, below a tree that blossoms with knives. The water lapping at her toes is warm and clear and black, lit from within but deep, so deep. She holds the hand of a child. The child reaches for a flower.

When she wakes up, her left hand is asleep where it’s been pinned by her own body. At least, this time, her head doesn’t hurt as sharply.

Shaking the buzzing out of her fingers, she sits up and checks her phone for the time. Just after 4 in the morning.

Still, she’s wide awake now, and she’s not the only one. Michael sprawls across the middle of the bed, warm and soft-skinned and snoring lightly, but his other side is empty, which means Alex is up and moving around somewhere, so Maria slips out of bed to find him.

It’s a Sunday night—well, Monday morning, now—the one day of the week they try and carve out for the three of them together as all their relationships balance between them. It’s the day that works best for all three of their schedules, but that doesn’t mean Alex doesn’t have to work in the morning, so if anyone should be in bed…

She finds him in the den, lit by the glow of his laptop screen, headphones in his ears. He takes one out when he sees her, and when she flops down beside him, the two of them squished into an armchair together, she sees he’s working in his music program on the song he hasn’t let her or Michael hear yet.

“Couldn’t sleep?” He asks, shifting his arm to make room for her.

“That’s my line.”

“Well, I asked first.”

“Just, y’know, dreams.”

“Mm. Same.”

She shoots him a worried look, knowing the sort of dreams that usually leave him up and working at this hour, but he just smiles gentle at her, a little weary but mostly unworried. So she snuggles in, laying her head on his shoulder.

“When are you going to share your new song? You know we don’t care if it’s not finished…it doesn’t have to be perfect to be beautiful,” she says, staring at the peaks and valleys of notes on the screen.

“…Okay,” Alex says.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

Brushing her hair aside, he tucks one of his headphones into her ear and presses play. Maria closes her eyes.

_My entropy changes._ That’s how Michael has always described it, the way music organizes his mind, reaches inside him and rearranges and leaves him different when it’s gone. Singing does that for Maria, too, her body the instrument, filling up and pouring out and _becoming._

Just listening, though, when it’s someone she loves speaking through the notes, that’s good, too. And though he’s still sleeping, music being music and Alex being Alex makes it feel like Michael is here with them too. Someday, she hopes to dream some answers to why music is this _thing_ that connects them, but for now, it’s enough that it does.

* * *

Where Maria dreams, the wheat is as golden as it is endless, stretching out from the barn to the horizon, and there is a man with her grandmother’s beautiful black eyes, her grandmother’s beautiful, generous mouth. The man teaches her how to sing, and she carries that song to her children, hidden to keep them safe. She sings to the three children, lays a hand on each of their pods in turn, and when she wakes up she only remembers the melody.

She’s stirring a pot of chili on the stove when a pair of solid arms slides around her waist, Michael curling in close and brushing his lips against her cheek. His heart beats steady and strong against her back, and a weight drops from her shoulders as she leans against him, a weight she hadn’t even thought she was carrying.

Michael has that effect on people. Not everyone, not always, but as deep into loving him as Maria is, there’s no man more reliable, no one better for leaning on.

Well, except maybe Alex, but Alex has always been special.

“What was that?” he asks.

“Hm?”

“The song you were humming. I’ve never heard it before.”

“Oh…just something from a dream.”

“A dream? Or…”

“Mm. Maybe.”

Michael draws the tip of his nose along the shell of her ear, making all the fine little hairs there shiver. Arms around her, his body is warm and heavy, and he’s leaning on her every bit as much as she’s leaning on him.

“How’s your head?” He asks, gently.

“Fine. Clear.” She turns in his arms. “I’m _okay,_ Michael. Please stop worrying. I dream almost every night, and it’s not…violent, like a waking vision might be. Even the headaches are getting better.”

“I know. I know. I trust you.”

He curls in even more so they can kiss. She slides her hands up his arms, up his shoulders, up his neck to cup his jaw and slide her fingers into his hair.

And just when he goes to pull back, she yanks him in by the hair, opens her mouth, rakes her teeth along his bottom lip when he gasps, and those strong hands of his fall down to her hips and _lift_ and, like dancing, she locks her legs around his waist.

With a click, the stove turns off, and they lose themselves in each other.

* * *

Where Maria dreams, a little girl with cornsilk hair watches her with enormous eyes as she tries, tries to explain the journey they’re facing. Where Maria dreams, a tiny baby girl with Roy Bronson’s eyes and mouth squeezes her thumb, and her heart breaks. Where Maria dreams, two more generations of little girls are born and grow, and where Maria dreams, there is a little girl with a halo of corkscrew curls, soft brown skin, and Michael’s lovely eyes, cradled in Alex’s arms.

When she dreams, it’s mostly of the past, but the future is waiting for her too, golden and within reach.

In the future, their house is full of love and music. They live on a planet where glass is not a living, glowing thing, but Michael coaxes it to life all the same, under his magic touch.

The future. Maria sees it through her daughter’s eyes, the way her mother saw through her, sometimes, and when she does, she tries to close her eyes and sleep, unspoiled, rest, and wait to find out when she’s ready.


End file.
